Four Bottlenecks in the Energy Transition — and Four New Books That Address Them
The energy transition is usually discussed as a single problem. It isn't. It is at least four separate engineering problems, each with its own literature, its own practitioners, and its own unresolved questions. Four new titles from CRC Press — all published between May and June 2026 — map onto four of those problems with unusual precision. Taken together they describe, from the ground up, where the technical work actually sits.
1. The industrial plant that optimises heat and water separately
Integrated Optimization of Energy and Water Networks for Sustainable Industrial Systems
José María Ponce-Ortega, César Ramírez Márquez, Eusiel Rubio-Castro, Fabricio Nápoles-Rivera, Luis Fernando Lira-Barragán · CRC Press, 29 June 2026 · 418 pages, 151 illustrations · ISBN 9781041154594
Process plants have optimised heat exchanger networks for four decades and water networks for nearly as long — but almost always as separate problems. They are not separate. Cooling water demand is a function of how well heat is integrated; effluent treatment consumes energy; utility systems couple the two at every turn.
This volume, part of the Green Chemistry and Chemical Engineering series, treats them as one optimisation problem across fourteen chapters in three parts. Part I covers heat exchanger network synthesis, including a genetic-algorithm approach to multipass design and a hierarchical framework that accounts for pressure losses. Part II moves to waste heat recovery — cross-plant networks, Organic Rankine Cycles coupled to industrial units, trigeneration. Part III addresses multi-facility water networks within eco-industrial park frameworks, closing with a chapter on the water-energy nexus itself.
What makes it useful rather than merely comprehensive is Chapter 6: a structured methodology for retrofitting existing plants without major capital works. That is where most of the available savings actually are.
2. The grid you can no longer assume
Small-Scale Renewable Energy Systems: Independent Electricity for Community, Business, and Home — Second Edition
Sven Ruin, Göran Sidén · CRC Press, 5 May 2026 · 238 pages, 151 illustrations · ISBN 9781041211822
Distributed generation has moved from enthusiast territory to mainstream engineering, driven by electricity prices, extreme weather and the electrification of heat and transport. The problem is that most of the accessible literature is either promotional or hopelessly generic.
Ruin and Sidén are not generalists. Sven Ruin is a consulting engineer specialising in hybrid systems — combining generation technologies for off-grid supply — and has participated in the IEA's small wind task force. Göran Sidén built the renewable energy engineering programme at Halmstad University in Sweden and taught a course in wind power technology as far back as 1994. Their book carries the formulas, the certified small-turbine performance data, and the design methodology that specification work actually requires.
The second edition is updated throughout and adds new practical case studies of homes, businesses and communities that have achieved significant energy independence — or are honest about how far they still are from it. Six chapters: generation, storage (with a comparison of lead-acid, nickel-based and lithium chemistries), consumption, system design, and the case studies.
3. The 250 million tonnes nobody wants to discuss
Waste-to-Energy Technologies and Global Applications — Second Edition
Efstratios N. Kalogirou · CRC Press, 21 June 2026 · ISBN 9781032937649
Roughly 250 million tonnes of municipal solid waste are thermally treated worldwide each year to produce electricity and heat. The overwhelming majority of those plants run on grate combustion of as-received or post-recycling waste. Waste-to-energy is a large, real and rapidly growing industry — and it is also the most politically awkward corner of the sector, sitting uneasily between landfill diversion and the recycling hierarchy.
Kalogirou is the right person to write about it without either boosterism or apology. He co-founded and first chaired WTERT Greece, was the first Vice-Chair of the Global WTERT Council headquartered at Columbia University's Earth Engineering Center, and is a permanent member of the ISWA Working Group on Energy Recovery. He has visited WtE plants on every continent.
The book covers combustion, novel gasification, plasma gasification and pyrolysis, then works through dozens of real plant case studies — planning, execution, national strategy, life-cycle results, and the financials. The second edition adds three new chapters: waste to hydrogen, carbon capture and storage/utilisation, and the new WtE plants in Dubai and the Middle East. That last addition matters more than it sounds; the Gulf is where the next wave of capacity is being built.
4. The materials chemistry every scenario quietly assumes
Materials for Energy Storage
Niroj Kumar Sahu, Arpan Kumar Nayak, Andrews Nirmala Grace (Editors) · CRC Press, 21 May 2026 · ISBN 9781032805764
Every credible decarbonisation pathway assumes that storage costs keep falling and energy densities keep rising. Both assumptions rest entirely on materials chemistry, and neither is guaranteed.
This edited volume works at that level. Rather than surveying battery types, it examines why particular electrode and electrolyte materials behave as they do — and what happens at the interface between them, which is where charge transfer, degradation and safety are actually decided. Chapters cover transition metal oxide nanomaterials for sodium-ion batteries and hybrid capacitors, metal carbides and nitrides, ferrite nanomaterials, and polymers for electrochemical storage.
The section on commercial and fabrication considerations is the one worth flagging. It is the part most materials research omits, and it is precisely what separates a promising laboratory result from a manufacturable cell.
Four problems, one shelf
Read in sequence, these four books trace the energy transition from the industrial plant that must decarbonise, through the distributed generation that will supply it, past the waste stream it produces, down to the electrochemistry that determines whether any of it can be stored. They are not a series. They simply happen to sit, together, on the fault line.
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Q&A
What is the water-energy nexus in industrial engineering?
It is the physical coupling between a plant's thermal and water subsystems: heat integration determines cooling water demand, and effluent treatment consumes energy. Optimising them jointly exposes savings that are invisible when each is handled separately — the central argument of Ponce-Ortega and colleagues.
How much municipal solid waste is converted to energy globally?
Approximately 250 million tonnes are thermally treated each year worldwide to produce electricity and heat, the great majority through grate combustion of municipal solid waste.
Which battery chemistry suits an off-grid renewable installation?
It depends on cycle life, depth of discharge, temperature range and budget. Ruin and Sidén compare lead-acid, nickel-based and lithium-based chemistries against each of these criteria, together with monitoring requirements.
Why does the electrode-electrolyte interface matter in energy storage?
Because it governs charge transfer, degradation and safety. A material with excellent bulk properties can still fail in service if the interface is unstable — which is why Materials for Energy Storage devotes a full chapter to it.
What is waste to hydrogen?
A route in which waste-derived syngas is processed to produce hydrogen rather than electricity directly. It is one of three new chapters in the second edition of Kalogirou's book, alongside carbon capture and the Middle East plants.
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